The Romanee-Conti topped Sotheby’s two-day wine sale that
ended last night with every lot sold for a total of HK$63.64
million ($8.2 million) including fees, compared with a HK$57.3
million presale estimate at hammer prices.

“I do see a sudden improvement in prices,” Ami Hung, a
Hong Kong-based collector, said at the event. “It’s one of the
ways to see how people feel about this year’s worldwide
economics and they have a pretty optimistic outlook.”

Sotheby’s 100 percent success rate in the first major Hong
Kong auctions of the year was in contrast to last September when
some lots failed to sell. The Liv-ex 100 Index of Fine Wines
gained 2.5 percent in the first two months this year after
falling 21.6 during the second half of 2011.

Two cases of Romanee-Conti 1988 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti
had the top price of HK$1.59 million each, compared with a
presale high estimate of HK$1.1 million.

Romanee-Conti produces about 450 cases of wine per year on
an estate of 1.8 hectares (4.4 acres) and is consistently the
most sought-after Burgundy at auction.

Acker Auction

Wine auction house Acker Merrill & Condit raised HK$58.3
million including premium during a two-day sale ending March 31,
compared with at $50 million presale estimate at hammer prices,
with 95 percent of all lots sold.

Acker’s top lot was a case of 1945 Mouton Rothschild sold
privately before the auction for HK$1.7 million.

Chinese buyers are broadening their purchases to Burgundies
including Domaine de la Romanee-Conti as well as less expensive
second-and-third-growth Bordeaux, said Robert Sleigh, senior
director and head of wine for Asia at Sotheby’s (BID) in Hong Kong.

That’s one reason Sotheby’s included wines shipped directly
from California boutique wine maker Colgin Cellars and Harlan
Estate. Six bottles of the Napa Valley-based winery’s 2006
Colgin Cariad 2006 sold for HK$6,125 a bottle, more than twice
the lot’s high estimate.

Sotheby’s auctions started a five-day marathon of more than
3,100 lots that the New York-based auction house estimates may
raise as much as HK$1.9 billion. They include everything from
contemporary Asian paintings to Qianlong-era porcelain and Patek
Philippe watches. Demand is being watched after China pared the
nation’s economic growth target last month to 7.5 percent from
an 8 percent goal in place since 2005.

Today Sotheby’s auction will be led by an oil painting by
Chinese artist Zhang Xiaogang from his 1993 Bloodline series.
The work may fetch as much as $4.5 million. An oil-based work by
Zao Wou-Ki, a 20th-century Chinese abstract painter, carries a
high estimate of $HK28 million.

A work by Vietnamese painter Le Pho sold for HK$2.9
million, a record for artist and the highest paid for a
Vietnamese painting, Sotheby’s said.

(Frederik Balfour is a Reporter at Large for Muse, the arts
and culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed
are his own.)